Contributed by: GlassPipeMurderGlassPipeMurder(others by this writer | submit your own)Published on March 9th 2010There's "weird for the sake of being weird," and then there's bands like the White Mice who base their entire existence around it.
There have been plenty of bands who've ridden a wave of success at least in part on their aesthetic gimmicks. Gwar, certainly; the Aquabats to a degree; and even mor.

There's "weird for the sake of being weird," and then there's bands like the White Mice who base their entire existence around it.

There have been plenty of bands who've ridden a wave of success at least in part on their aesthetic gimmicks. Gwar, certainly; the Aquabats to a degree; and even more so, the Locust, who undoubtedly dealt a great deal of influence to the grindingly noisy, fully-costumed, God-hating White Mice. But whereas the other bands of the bundle subsidize their outlandish attire with substantial musical talent, the White Mice are content to merely molest the listener with repetitive, almost industrial noise. Unquestionably, one of the beauties of music is that there are no rules dictating some ratio of style and substance, but the White Mice clearly lean on the former like a crutch.

Despite the walls of droning inert noise that make up the compositions on Ganjahovahdose, there are some kind of cool things going on. The cryptic audio clips of movie and TV broadcasts spliced in strategically throughout the chaotic sonic landscapes of the album help create a creepy atmosphere that's palpable. Beyond that, though, there's little to laud. The band seems to pride themselves on what their promotional material describes as "pun-obsessed" and "toilet-humored" but the problem is that the puns aren't clever and nothing is funny in the slightest. "The Hard on of Edam"? "The Ape-Caca-Lips"? "The Crapture"? Gimme a break! The likewise unclever "The Shroud of Urine" is nothing but "White" noise with no attempt at any lyrics at all. You might as well listen to Wolf Eyes.

It's not to say that this band and album won't appeal to some sector of the music-consuming populace. If it does, though, it will most likely be the same type of self-described "wackos" who comprise the White Mice.